Book Review: Sun-Earth-Man

Zip Dobyns

Sun-Earth-Man by Theodor Landscheidt

Published by Urania Trust in 1989

Ted Landscheidt is a retired German judge who is challenging
the scientific establishment with his astronomical-astrological theories. I
found his recently published book both exciting (my normal reaction to
knowledge that is really new to me) and astonishing. The amazement is how
anyone managed to discover a major and previously unknown key to some of the
complex cycles of earth and sky. Humans have observed the sky for thousands of
years, searching for the movements in the sky which correspond to and throw
light on the cycles (rhythmic changes) occurring on earth. But the key offered
by Ted Landscheidt seems to be a truly new insight which “makes sense” of what
seemed to be random, unpredictable phenomena.

Landscheidt discovered that Jupiter, our largest planet,
seemed to play a crucial role in three different types of configurations
(astrological aspects). He writes that Jupiter’s aspects to Earth and Venus
exert tide-generating forces on the Sun, seeming to modulate or regulate some
Sun activities. Mercury shared this tidal role but its influence was so small
that forecasts could be made without including its position. The role of Mars
is even smaller according to Landscheidt, and he leaves it out of his
calculations. Pluto also can be ignored.

Secondly, Landscheidt says that Jupiter’s aspects to the
other three gas giants, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, influence the Sun’s
revolution around the Barycenter or center of mass (CM) in the solar system,
and the resultant variations in the Sun’s movements in turn influence the
planetary motions through feedback loops. The Sun is on the CM when Jupiter
opposes Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The center of the Sun is farthest away
from the CM when Jupiter forms a massive conjunction with the three big outer
planets.

The third important type of Jupiter configuration involves
Jupiter, the Sun and the CM. Landscheidt seems to have personally discovered
the crucial role played by aspects between these three gravitational centers;
Jupiter, our largest planet; the Sun, more massive that everything else in our
solar system combined; and the center of mass in the whole system.

Conjunctions of Jupiter, Sun and CM occur at varying
intervals, and correlate with a variety of cycles on earth. I have previously
written about an article in Cycles magazine called “When the Sun goes
Backward,” which described the irregular motion of the Sun about the CM or
Barycenter. When the CM moves nearly parallel with the surface of the Sun or
oscillates about it, there are periods of major instability which Landscheidt
calls phase changes. These unstable periods may last from less than three
years to more than eight years, and occur irregularly. Landscheidt lists five
past episodes, going back to 1789, and says the next is coming between 2002 and
2011.

According to Landscheidt, among the cyclic changes which can
be correlated with these three types of Jupiter aspects are the Sun’s rotation
rate, its energetic solar eruptions, geomagnetic storms, the ozone column in
earth’s atmosphere, our rainfall, temperature, the rise and fall of animal
populations, economic cycles, interest rates, stock prices, gross national
product, phases of general instability and historical periods of radical change
and revolution.

Landscheidt’s graphs are very impressive, showing how the
conjunctions of Jupiter, Sun and CM tend to occur at peaks or troughs of cycles
including the numbers of lynx skins brought in by hunters, the prices of U.S.
long term government bonds, U.S. stock market prices, pig iron prices, salmon
catches in the north Atlantic, earth’s magnetic field rate of change, etc.
What is dramatic, and I think a unique discovery by Landscheidt, is the shift
at the times of the phase changes mentioned above. Where Jupiter-Sun-CM
conjunctions coincided with peaks in a given cycle before a phase change, they
match the troughs after the instability period and vice versa. Since the
aspects can be irregular in time, until you know which ones to watch and you
have the key of the phase change periods which signal reversals in the
correlations between astrological aspects and earth cycles, the timing of the
cycles can easily seem to be statistical artifacts or simply random.

Landscheidt includes a brief discussion of some of the
theories of the new science specialty being called Chaos. One important point
is the instability of “boundary” regions. The surface of the Sun (and earth
and other planets) is a boundary, and Landscheidt connects the major phase
changes with the periods when the CM is moving close to the boundary of the
Sun. He also refers to the work of Lorenz and his “butterfly” effect which was
mentioned in the previous Mutable Dilemma article on Chaos. The
principle is stated as extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, so that the
flapping of a butterfly’s wings in New England could eventually have an effect
on weather anywhere in the world. Landscheidt offers this strongly supported
principle from Chaos theory to refute the scientists who claim that the planets
are too small and too far away to have any effect on earth.

Landscheidt has been making forecasts since the 1970s, and
has had some spectacular successes in predicting times of intense solar flares
and other phenomena. Of his predicted periods of solar eruptions from January
1979 to January 1981, 27 out of 29 solar events fell in his predicted periods.
Landscheidt gives the statistical probability of this match as greater than 0.00001,
or less than one chance in 10,000 that the match could occur by chance. Among
his current forecasts which are likely to be of interest to many people, he
expects a bottom in the stock markets of the world in 1990. He thinks the
German market will bottom in the spring, but that other markets may vary by a
few months. Another forecast of general interest involves the climate and
temperature. Though many scientists are predicting increasing heat from the
“greenhouse” effect of gasses which retain heat in the atmosphere of earth,
Landscheidt is predicting a colder period just ahead. Sunspot minima have been
associated with increased cold in the past, including two periods called “mini
ice ages” when glaciers actually advanced for some years. Landscheidt expects
a period of sunspot minima after 1990, accompanied by increased cold, with a
stronger minima and more intense cold which should peak in 2030. He does not
expect the cold period to end until 2070. It would be interesting if the
“greenhouse” gasses and the sunspot minima cancel each other and the situation
stays relatively normal.

There is a certain amount of subjectivity in attempts to
correlate history with any theory of cycles, whether we draw the cycles from
astronomy or from other sources like Ravi Batra’s philosophical framework. Our
choice of events to support our theory is always biased to some extent, but
Landscheidt’s phase shift periods do coincide with some major changes in human
activity, especially involving economic and political issues. I have added
more events to the ones mentioned by Landscheidt. Expanding the orb allowed in
the aspect would extend the time periods listed, as Landscheidt points out, but
I have stayed with his narrower orb.

The first of the instability periods which is listed was
between 1789 and 1793. The U.S. actually became a country at that time under
our Constitution and our first President, rather than a collection of
colonies. The French Revolution marked a drastic overthrow of their monarchy,
while the Netherlands and Hispaniola in the Caribbean also demanded freedom
from their foreign rulers.

The next phase shift from 1823 to 1828 was marked by the
Monroe Doctrine and by the attempts of many countries in Central and South
America to throw off the control of Spain. A British law legalized labor
unions within strict limits. According to one reference, the petroleum
industry began in Baku, Russia, in 1823, and the New York Stock Exchange opened
as such in 1825. The world’s first steam locomotive passenger service started,
and the first wire suspension bridge opened. The first overland journey to
southern California began and the first commercially practical gas stove was
designed. The period ended with the U.S. passing a high tariff law to tax
imports and electing Andrew Jackson whose term of office could be considered
the beginning of the Democratic Party.

The next phase shift from 1867 to 1870 saw the publication
of Das Kapital by Karl Marx which planted the seeds for later
Communism. The Dominion of Canada was formed by the union of four provinces
and the U.S. acquired Alaska. The U.S. made its only attempt to impeach a
president, but Johnson escaped by one vote. The first typewriter was
developed, and Rockefeller began his battle to gain a monopoly over oil in the U.S. The world became smaller with the completion of the Suez Canal and the first
transcontinental train track across North America. An association to promote
women’s rights was started in the U.S. and the territories of Wyoming and Utah became the first to permit women to vote.

The phase shift from 1933 to 1937 saw Hitler begin his 12
year rule of Nazi Germany, and Roosevelt begin his 12 year period as President
of the U.S. Roosevelt initiated a massive restructuring of the U.S. government with his New Deal, including a proliferation of government agencies. After
individual citizens were ordered to turn in their gold to the U.S. government, the official price was raised. England had its only voluntary abdication of a
ruling monarch. Salazar began a 37 year rule as dictator of Portugal, turning the clock backward in his country. Japan began its expansion with an invasion of China which only ended after its defeat in 1945. Mussolini, dictator in Italy, began his empire building by invading Ethiopia. Stalin began a purge of many Soviet leaders
and forced peasants onto huge collective farms where millions died of
starvation, while the world tried to struggle out of the depths of the Great
Depression.

The phase shift from 1968 to 1972 saw Nixon change the world
economy by letting the dollar float against gold rather than maintain a fixed
(artificially low) dollar value for gold which was draining our gold supply.
As a result of this action, other countries soon abandoned the currency equivalences
which had been established in the Bretton Woods meeting in 1944 at the same
time that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund had been founded. The
financial world has never achieved stability since that turning point. Those
momentous years also saw a man walk on the Moon, the U.S. decision to leave Vietnam, accepting our first major military defeat, and Nixon took the actions which led to
Watergate, our first Presidential resignation. Simultaneously, there was
student unrest around the world and the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War.

The next phase shift in 2002 to 2011 could be dramatic. I
expect additional major changes in the world’s power and monetary structures.
Previous phase shifts marked the beginning of modern, totalitarian Communism in
Marx’s book; its most ruthless phase in Stalin’s purges and destruction of
Russian peasants; and we may see its final downfall during the next phase
shift. The current changes in Russia under Gorbachev and the current attempt
of the Chinese elders to turn the clock back, are certainly signs that
atheistic brute force is not a permanent solution.

In the latter pages of Landscheidt’s book, he gets into more
esoteric theories which seem less firmly established, but many readers might
love his description of the “harmony of the spheres.” He associates musical
chords with planetary aspects and describes the harmonics of aspects. He
correlates major phase jumps which occur at very long intervals with unstable,
variable weather as shown in the tree rings of very old bristlecone pine
trees. The past phase jumps marking major new epochs are listed as occurring
in 3839 B.C., 2916 B.C., 1369 B.C., and 1128 A.D. These dates are an example
of what looks at first like random data since the intervals between the dates
vary widely, but Landscheidt shows how the intervals are harmonics of a basic
interval. The next epoch is scheduled for 2030 A.D., hence Landscheidt’s
prediction of the sunspot minima and cold at that time.

For any readers who are interested in science and who want
ammunition to offer to materialistic scientists, this is a vitally important
book! After reading it, I am qualifying my language a bit. In interpreting a
chart, I normally say that the planets are not “doing” anything, that the sky
is a clock and the horoscope symbolizes our character. I still think the
latter part of the statement is true, but I have started saying that there is
some evidence that the planets modulate the Sun which in turn influences our
climate and other physical variables on earth. But I still think that we are
born when we fit the state of the world and that we can change our character
and therefore our destiny if we are willing to make the effort.